Like the title says, Apple Music, iTunes, and iBooks are now available in China. This brings a whole new set of content to one of the worlds largest markets. This will also likely result in a lot of new content being added to the store.
If you are an iTunes affiliate, you’ll also be pretty stoked to know that you are now able to provide affiliate links for Apps and content in China as well! And if you’re a Chinese site and don’t yet have an iTunes Affiliate account, I’d look to sign up for one now.

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MacTech just announced MacTech Pro: a new series of one day, regional events that are specifically designed for professional Apple techs, consultants, and support staff. MacTech Pro Events are single-track, hotel-based seminars that are specifically geared to serve the needs of professional consultants, IT Pros and techs who support others on OS X and iOS. The first MacTech Pro will take place on March 4th, 2015 in Seattle.

MacTech Pro Events are economically priced, include the full day of sessions, lunch, breaks and access to sponsor tables. Those who register early can take advantage of the Early Registration and save $200.00 and pay only $299 to register for any of the nine regional MacTech Pro Events in 2015.

To honor the announcement, those that register this week can save an additional $50 savings for any MacTech Pro Event in 2015 — $249 until January 26th. EDU pricing for students, educators and staff is $199.

Additional information on topics, sessions, sessions chairs, speaker and sponsorship opportunities are available at http://pro.mactech.com/

Xcode and other tools can be used to view logs on iOS devices. One of those other tools is libimobiledevice. I usually install libimobiledevice using homebrew, as there are a few dependencies that can be a little annoying. To install homebrew if you haven’t already, run the following command:
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Once run, follow the prompts to complete the installation. Once homebrew is installed, run the following brew command to download the required components and then libimobiledevice:
brew install -v --devel --fresh automake autoconf libtool wget libimobiledevice
Then run ideviceinstaller:
brew install -v --HEAD --fresh --build-from-source ideviceinstaller
Once these are installed, you can plug in a paired device, unlock it and use the following command to view the logs on the screen:
idevicesyslog
This is akin to running a tail against the device. Again, the device must be paired. You can use the command line (e.g. if you’re running this on Linux) to view the logs, but if you’re not paired you’ll need to use idevicepair to pair your device, followed by the pair verb (which is very different from the pear verb):
idevicepair pair
You can also unpair using the unpair verb:
idevicepair unpair

When pairing and unpairing, you should see the appropriate entries in /var/db/lockdown. The final option I’m going to cover in this article is the date (very useful when scripting unit tests using this suite. To obtain this, use the idevicedate command, no operators or verbs required:
idevicedate

You can do some pretty simple testing of ports and network communications using strategies I’ve outlined in the past with tcpdump, trace route, telnet, curl, stroke and of course ping. However, netcat has a few interesting things you can do with it; namely actually run a port super-quickly to test traffic between subnets, forcing scans of ipv6 traffic, debugging sockets, keeping connections alive, parodying through SOCKS 4 and 5 and just checking for daemons that are listening rather than actually sending data to them.
In this first example, we’re going to just check that Apple’s web server is accessible (adding -v for verbose output):
/usr/bin/nc -v www.apple.com 80
The result would be pretty verbose

If we added a -w to timeout we’ll cut out all the cruft (but wouldn’t know that the server’s at Akamai). Next, we’ll get a little more specific and fire up a test to check Apple’s push gateway at, using port 2195:
/usr/bin/nc -v -w 15 gateway.push.apple.com 2195
But, I want the cruft for the purposes of this article. Next, we can add a -4 to force connections over IPv4 and check the Apple feedback server and port 2196, also required for APNs functionality:
/usr/bin/nc -v -4 feedback.push.apple.com 2196
Right about now, something is probably happening at Apple where they’re getting sick of me sending all this data their direction, so let’s add a -z option, to just scan for daemons, without actually sending any data their way:
/usr/bin/nc -vz -4 feedback.push.apple.com 2196
Because of how NAT works, you might notice that the src port keeps changing (incrementing actually). Here’s the thing, we’re gonna’ go ahead and force our source port to stay the same as our destination port using the -p option:
/usr/bin/nc -vz -4 -p 2196 feedback.push.apple.com 2196
Now, what if this is failing? Well, let’s spin up a listener. I like to start on my own subnet, then move to another subnet on the same network and ultimately to another network so I’m checking zone-by-zone so-to-speak, for such a failure. So, we can spin up a listener with netcat in a few seconds using the -l option on another host:
/usr/bin/nc -l 2196
Then I can scan myself:
/usr/bin/nc 127.0.0.1 2196
I could also do this as a range if I forgot which port I used per host:
/usr/bin/nc 127.0.0.1 2195-2196
Now, as is often the case, if our connection problem is because data isn’t parodying, we can also use nc to check that using the -x operator followed by an IP and then : and a port. For example:
/usr/bin/nc -vz -4 -w 10 -p 2196 -x 10.0.0.2:8080 feedback.push.apple.com 2195-2196
Fun times with push notifications. Enjoy.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now. But just in case you hadn’t logged into iWork.com in awhile or let the to-do lapse, it’s just worth a reminder that iWork Public Beta, the site that you could upload Pages, Numbers and Keynotes to, is being deprecated. The end comes on today.
In other words, if you have documents up on the site, you should download them immediately or you won’t be able to come August. Apple has even provided a document explaining how.
The service that was being provided by the iWork public beta is replaced by iCloud. Using iCloud, you can sync your documents between all of your devices. When you configure iCloud in System Preferences, you are prompted to sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks, but iCloud also gets configured for file synchronization as well at that time. While iCloud doesn’t allow you to edit documents online, you can access them through the iCloud web portal and download them from any computer you like. The new iCloud integration also allows for seeing all your documents in each supported app, when first opened:

Sometimes you deploy iOS based devices with iTunes. There are a number of factors that can still force you into iTunes based deployments, such as needing the icons to appear a certain way in iOS. It’s not optimal but it happens. And sometimes you need to give an iPad or iPhone to a user leveraging an existing AppleID that will have a password known by multiple users. Again, not the right way, but there are design requirements that cause you to do it from time to time.
And if you’re using a shared account, one of the last things you want is for users to actually buy stuff with that shared account. Because you might have used that account and connected a credit card to it, it can come up from time to time that you then need to disable that card. Again, none of this is optimal, but it happens.
To remove the card, first open up iTunes.
From here, click on the AppleID in the upper right hand corner of the screen (the email address the account was registered with, usually) and select Account from the drop-down list.
Once the account page loads, click on Edit beside the Payment Type.
At the Edit Payment Information screen, click on None (the big red arrow isn’t actually on the screen at this point, btw).
Then click on Done and there won’t be a payment funding source attached to the account any longer. This can cause a few minor issues with deployments, but turns out way better than having tons of explicit content downloaded to devices using your organizations funds…

In a previous article I showed how to get and install an SMIME certificate. Now let’s look at installing it into Mail. It’s really, really hard. First, open Mail. Then, click on the Mail menu and select Preferences. Then click on Accounts. Then click on the account you got an SMIME cert for. Then, in the TLS box, select the certificate you want to use.
Next, go to compose a new message. You will see the little disclosure triangle to the left of the From dialog. Click on it and then check the box for the lock and the icon to the right of that, meant to look like a Beholder from Dungeons and Dragons. Beholders see well, so they can see if you’re the person who really is the person allowed to send the email. The lock encrypts email (provided you have a certificate for all recipients) and the eye of the beholder icon signs messages. Once you’re happy with your checkboxes, click on OK.
Now, in your new email message, use the icons. Sign or encrypt. If you don’t have a certificate for a user, have them sign an email and send it to you. When you read their email you should then have their public key in your Keychain. Now, take your 100 sided dice and take the rest of the day off (after all, you just figured out how to make email more secure for your company).
Also, you may notice that in these screens I’m using MobileMe certs. If you use the System Preferences pane to install MobileMe into your account then you’ll be greeted by the cert automatically being installed into your keychain for you. So for MobileMe users, you don’t even need to go get a 3rd party cert. I also use this on my work email, but didn’t want to put those screens in here (after all, I did misplace my tin hat and would hate to get hax0r’d by government goblins before I can track it down).

As most people who are going to read anything I write will already know, Apple released their new cloud service today. The Apple pages are already up, with a splash page on the main site pointing to a dedicated iCloud page. Apple has also anticipated some of the questions that most of us using MobileMe were going to ask in a short Kbase article re: the transition from MobileMe to iCloud:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4597
Additionally, an email went out to MobileMe users today that read:

We’d like to share some exciting news with you about iCloud — Apple’s upcoming cloud service, which stores your content and wirelessly pushes it to your devices. iCloud integrates seamlessly with your apps, so everything happens automatically. Available this fall, iCloud is free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users.
What does this mean for you as a MobileMe member?
When you sign up for iCloud, you’ll be able to keep your MobileMe email address and move your mail, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks to the new service.
Your MobileMe subscription will be automatically extended through June 30, 2012, at no additional charge. After that date, MobileMe will no longer be available.
When iCloud becomes available this fall, we will provide more details and instructions on how to make the move. In the meantime, we encourage you to learn more about iCloud.

Immediately, users of iOS 4.3.3 or higher, can make use of the new music features. I purchased a song in iTunes and received an alert from the iTunes store to enable the feature.
I could then go over to Store -> Settings from within the iPhone and enable Music and Apps automatically downloading when purchased from another device. It’s also possible to enable transfers over cell networks, although I can’t imagine a lot of people using such an option.
Apple also announced a slew of new features for iOS 5 and for Mac OS X 10.7, Lion. To me the most critical things announced today is that iOS 5 will not need to be tethered to a computer to activate and that it can wirelessly run software updates. Those items are extremely important for growing enterprises of iOS-based devices. The most important things that weren’t bothered to be announced is that Xsan is included in Mac OS X now and that Mac OS X Server survives another profitable year at Apple, but now as an App (or as much an App as you can be when you’re an operating system). These were published to the Apple website. Many thought Xsan would be disappearing, but it is obviously here to stay for some time. The most important thing that we haven’t heard jack-diddly-squat about is the future of our friend Final Cut Server given that Mac OS X can now do a subset of the features out of the box (versioning).
Considering that I have more Apple computers than Imelda Marcos had shoes I have a lot of mixed feelings about synchronizing media between devices. Luckily I don’t have to enable the new features on all of them, although I already have on some…

Large scale mail migrations can be tricky. There is a shareware app that can be used to migrate pst files from the pst format into mbox, which can then be used with Mac OS X http://www.littlemachines.com.
If the migration process needs to be automated (they all seem to at scale) then a script could be written to crawl users, finds the pst files and then convert them. Or it could be done on the client side using a self-destructing launchd item. Conversion syntax for libpst would be something like the following:
readpst -o /output/folder /server/path/user.pst
Before you can use readpst, it needs to be built via libpst on the system that will run any scripts. Download libpst from http://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=30390. This can be done with curl:
curl http://alioth.debian.org/frs/download.php/2492/libpst-0.5.3.tar.gz --O libpst-0.5.3.tar.gz
Next, extract the tar:
tar -zxvf libpst-0.5.3.tar.gz
Then cd into the new directory:
cd libpst-0.5.3
Then make libpst:
make
And now readpst should be available to convert mailboxes. This could be run from a centralized server or distributed to clients.